PROBABLY the most striking and significant lesson of the World War is the realization that without the coordination of all the resources of a belligerent, victory is impossible. War today finds “nations in arms”—the idea of the professional Army and Navy carrying on the fight while the civilian conducts “business as usual” is no more, and the warfare of today and the future envisages every last resource of a nation whether it be military, commercial, or scientific, employed to its elastic limit in the effort to win. Naturally the complications arising from many varied and at times conflicting interests demand cooperation and coordination to the greatest extent.
As the scope of civilian participation in war has increased, so have the factors in the actual military and naval prosecution of wartime activities become amplified. The necessity for expert coordination of the multiplied weapons now available to the commander is increased. The control and direction of all the elements comprised in a force is the function of command and it is apparent that the high command is faced, in the exercise of its function, with increasingly grave responsibility.
In the past, when war was a matter of small armies, small fleets, and limited theaters of action, the commander was able personally to exercise his command function aided by an administrative, technical, and supply staff, which busied itself with such questions as the service of supply and administrative details incident to the operations in hand. The commander was able to devote his time and energy to the handling of his forces on the tactical field. Then, too, he could have a more or less complete picture of the situation, estimating the enemy’s forces, their strength and disposition, and make his own plans and decisions.
War today presents a different problem. The increased size of the fighting forces, the great extent of the front, the multitude of new weapons; all these make demands on the commander which without adequate assistance, he could not meet. A commander today would indeed be a superman could he but keep track of his own forces and prepare orders for them, to say nothing of enemy effort. Modern conditions of warfare have added such a multiplicity of detail to the function of high command that it is impossible for one individual personally to attend to the onerous details required by his command responsibility and at the same time to pay attention to the broader phases of it.
This condition has made apparent the necessity for a general staff, in addition to the administrative, technical, and supply staff. The Army found, in its participation in the World War, that its organization was inadequate and that a general staff, to render strategical and tactical assistance to the commander, was an absolute necessity. To the credit of the Army, it evolved a staff idea, based particularly on the German general staff system, and proceeded to train and employ general officers on staff duty. The mission of the general staff is to assist the commander in the exercise of his command function. It is composed of a chief of staff and four assistants and this staff idea is carried out, in form and function, in all commands down to the division.
The chief of staff is the assistant, adviser, and representative of the commander and is the coordinator of the whole command; he transmits the commander’s will to the staff and troops. The four assistant chiefs of staff are assigned to the four distinct functions of command—personnel, intelligence, operations and training, and supply. Without going into a detailed analysis of the army general staff system, it may be said that the general staff forms a strategical and tactical service itself, especially trained to furnish detailed assistance in its own specialty of troop leadership, not to command the technical and administrative branches. In this sense the staff officer is trained in the leadership of troops of the combined arms, to coordinate the branches, not to perform their functions.
Because the general staff solves the problems of war, coordinates the various arms, and is, in effect, a part of the commander’s mind, its members must be trained for tactical command, and in order properly to function, each member should be able to assume any one of the four assignments on the staff.
In order to make clear the point that the general staff does not perform the functions of the various bureaus, but is a separate and distinct function, let us take for example the part G-4 (assistant chief of staff for supply) plays in the planning of an operation. The staff is informed as to the nature of the mission by the commander and the situation estimated by the members of the staff. G-4 collaborates with G-1, G-2, and G-3 in solving the problem and from his training as a general officer is able to supply definite information as to the logistic requirements of the contemplated operations. Without his knowledge of, and experience in, similar operations, his estimate of the logistic requirements for the present problem would be inadequate. Once the decision is arrived at, the quartermaster department receives definite and accurate estimates of the needs of the forces involved and makes provisions to meet them.
The outstanding features to be observed about the general staff are: that its duties are those which the commander formerly performed himself; that its duties are not at all those already assigned to other staff agencies; that the general staff relieves the commander of the burdensome details incident to the coordination of the activities of the various elements of the command in furtherance of his strategical and tactical plans; and that the general staff is not within the chain of command.
Naval operations of the present era have gone through the same amplification that army development has. World-wide seaborne commerce, outlying possessions, strategic waterways such as the Panama Canal, increased tactical possibilities due to the development of the air arm, and new and untried weapons: all these have broadened the scope and complexity of naval effort in war, so that the high naval command is faced with exactly the same sort of problem as is that of the Army. The Army has met the problem by the introduction and development of the general staff system. The Navy, the writer believes, is faced with a similar situation and the answer is yet to be found.
Ashore, there exists, in a measure, an analogue to the general staff idea. The office of the chief of naval operations is organized into departments whose heads are officers of flag rank, capable because of their experience and training in solving problems of war. They are lobes of the brain, so to speak, of the chief of operations. Certain high standards of service plus staff training should be demanded in these advisers to the chief of operations and undoubtedly are.
But the staff afloat presents no such effective organization nor is there, to the writer’s knowledge, any system in operation in the Navy which insures the assignment to the commands afloat, of men trained in the exercise of high command and capable, because of this training, to fill the billet of general staff officers. There exists undoubtedly, in the service, some repugnance to the idea of a general staff, probably because of its German origin. But call it by any name, its effectiveness remains unimpaired and the necessity for some such war staff is apparent.
In what direction this idea should be developed and what tendencies should be stressed in the formation of a general staff scheme in the Navy, the writer is not prepared to say. However, it seems that inasmuch as the officers assigned to the general staff of a commander of a fleet must possess the qualifications and training for high command in order to help solve the problems faced by the commander, they should be rear admirals in rank and should have had the advantages of special training along these lines in addition to actual seagoing experience as division commanders. This relation between the commander and his staff, i.e., similarity in training and experience, should be maintained down through the chain of flag commands.
In smaller commands the war staff idea can he carried out by officers of the technical staff in addition to other duties. However, it should be borne in mind that the detail of a specialist to the staff does not qualify him to discharge the duties of a general staff officer. His tactical training, his knowledge of command functions, experience, and professional qualifications, not his specialist accomplishments, are the considerations which should determine his fitness for general staff duty.
For the sake of discussion let us try to construct an organization scheme for a general naval staff, with particular attention to its application afloat, in view of the fact that any war service the fleet may be called upon to perform will probably be distant service with all its communication difficulties and consequent increased responsibilities of the commander in the actual theater of operations.
The necessary characteristics of such a scheme are its adaptability to the various higher commands, its practicability, and utility. Any departure from present practice which will involve radical changes in method, greatly increased personnel, and which is not useful in effect must necessarily be discarded.
The naval commander’s problems are closely associated with the “Estimate of the Situation”; that is, if he is properly trained he attacks every problem with the logical treatment indicated in the standard form of the “Estimate.” If he correctly estimates a given situation, his decisions are inevitably sound, and sound decisions carried out bring victory. Hence, his two objectives are sound decisions and the correct execution of them.
The integral steps leading to the decision are (a) a mission, which is either derived or contained in orders from the higher command. This is the commander’s task; (b) an investigation into the enemy’s forces, their strength, disposition, and probable intentions; (c) a complete knowledge of our own forces, their strength, disposition, and a survey of the courses of action open to us to carry out our mission, as affected by probable enemy effort.
The correct execution of the decisions of the commander depends on the clarity with which they are conveyed to the subordinates, in orders, assuming, of course, that the necessary zeal, loyalty, and professional fitness pervade the subordinate commands.
As has been pointed out previously, the extent and complexity of modern warfare is such as to make it almost impossible for a commander to keep track of what is going on over the extent of a modern battlefield. Therefore it becomes the logical duty of his staff to supply the necessary details, and a natural division of staff work is thereby suggested, as a basic idea for the organization of a strategical and tactical staff system, which will be practical in application, easily adapted to the various grades of command and which will serve a useful function, i.e., the assisting of the commander in the exercise of command.
Let us, then, organize a strategical and tactical staff along lines suggested by the fundamental mission of such a staff, bearing in mind the necessity of establishing a system which will be applicable to all commands of flag rank.
Naturally we first have a chief of staff, whose function it is to be the principal assistant, chief adviser, and representative of the commander. He is the coordinating agent who insures the proper functioning of the whole machine and is the medium for the transmission of the decisions of the commander to the staff and subordinate commands. The function of his assistants is to aid in the solution of the problem facing the commander, and a logical division of this work might be to assign one to “enemy forces,” one to “own forces,” and a third to logistics.
Number one, in handling “enemy forces,” naturally performs the related duty of intelligence officer and works in close collaboration with number two, who, in handling “own forces,” must of necessity be cognizant of enemy strength and activity in determining the chances of success in the various courses of action open to us. Number three, from his training and experience in command, would supply the necessary data as to the logistic requirements of the projected operations.
It will be seen that these tasks are not individual ones; they are performed in collaboration and are coordinate in nature. In order to forestall the natural inclination to enhance one’s own task at the expense of the other fellow’s, these three tasks assigned to our assistant chiefs of staff should be held in rotation by them. This will also emphasize the necessity for cooperation among the staff members.
For purposes of identification we might assign designating letters to these three functions in accordance with the fleet or command to which the staff is attached. Thus for the United States Fleet we designate the strategical and tactical staff as F-1, F-2, F-3; that of the battle fleet as BF-1, BF-2, BF-3; that of the scouting fleet as SF-1, SF-2, SF-3, and so forth. The function of each remains constant.
From the solution submitted by these three officers, the commander, advised by his chief of staff, makes the decision. This solution will be adequate and worth the commander’s attention only if the members of the staff are adequately trained in command themselves and have the necessary experience to see the problem in its larger aspects. This must be the fundamental characteristic of the general staff officer.
Not every officer is equipped by nature to fill this sort of staff assignment. Just as we recognize the need for ordnance and engineering specialists, so should the necessity for trained strategical and tactical specialists be admitted. We train our ordnance experts, our engineers, our aviators. By the same token our staff officers should be trained. The Naval War College is striving toward this end, it is true, but the War College does not assign officers to the fleet, nor does it differentiate in its own sphere between those who are mentally equipped for staff duty and those who are not. Every officer cannot be so equipped; it is not “the nature of the beast.” The writer is firm in the belief that mediocrity is not our standard. We eliminate a certain percentage of the applicants for aviation and submarine duty as unfit for this particular sort of work and find places for them elsewhere. But we employ no selective method in training our strategists and tacticians, probably because we have not as yet a well developed concept of the function of a war staff. One thing is certain, however; no matter what form our staff organization takes, training in command, strategy, and tactics should be a sine qua non to staff assignment. That training is given definite form and direction at the Naval War College, and the completion of the course there should be the preliminary without exception, to higher command or staff duty.
The scheme outlined above for the organization of a strategical and tactical staff to assist the high command is of course merely a “feeler.” The writer realizes that it is open to many criticisms, and that there are probably many better basic ideas upon which to build a war staff scheme, but if it serves no other purpose than that of a target for broadsides of criticisms, its mission will have been achieved, for criticism implies attention and attention to this vital subject will develop proper ideas.
The scheme suggested would be practical in that no great additional personnel is required; no change in methods of attacking problems is advocated. It is adaptable to all commands of flag rank; it is consistent with the employment of officers now assigned as staff technical assistants, provided they have had war staff training; it is a uniform method of supplying adequate assistance to all commands and therefore provides, in the lower commands, a selective source of supply for war staff assistants in the higher commands, and, what is most vital, it provides a group of men fitted by training and experience to take up the burden of actual command.
The problem of supplying trained assistants, experienced in the art of war, to our commanders, must be be met eventually. The Army found the answer in the crucible of war and had the opportunity of applying it because our allies were fighting the battle and we had time to install the system. We may never again be so fortunate. The Navy was not charged with the defeat of an enemy fleet in the World War; nor with the patrol of the seven seas and the guarding of our own shores and distant possessions. The writer naturally believes that if these problems had arisen, they would have been solved but that in the solution of them we inevitably would have been forced to effect an efficient war staff organization as were our brothers in arms, the Army. The hulks of warships still visible at Cape Helles, the waste of life at Anzac and on the hills of Gallipoli, and the whole failure of the campaign to force the Dardanelles, bear eloquent witness to the lack of efficient staff work. There is no need to go into more examples of such a nature; it is not pleasant; but unless facts are faced in a spirit of constructive criticism, we can logically expect like results from like causes.